Hello Earth People;
My son (13 years old) wants to build a gaming computer - a truly worthy endeavor. I have built several computers from the chassis up in the past. However, it appears that my knowledge and experience from the 80's / 90's are insufficient for building a truly modern gaming system.

SimCity5 is the target game that the hardware is being bought for. I have included some info and links above.

What I need is some advice from someone who has done this recently. The budget is around $600 (before taxes, shipping, etc...)

If we could start with a CPU / Video Card combo from the newegg.com link above, that would be great. However, if there are better sources for hardware I am open to suggestions.

In the end I would like a fairly complete solution with the motherboard, case and OS specified as well.

This should be a good start. It's already over budget and it's missing the case and PSU :)
But:
- it has an unlocked CPU - good if your son likes to tinker, good if you intend to keep it for more than 2 years - you can overclock it and breath some new life into it. And it does not really make sense financially to go for an i7 on a gaming system - the i5 is the sweet spot, IMO
- it has a video card that will allow your son to play pretty much anything at 1920X1080 px with mid-high details and high frame-rates (yes, even for SimCity 5)
- it has a SSD, which will improve the system's responsiveness a lot.
- it has 8 GB or RAM, which I consider to be a bare minimum for a gaming system.

Thanks for the help!
Two more items of interest:
How big should the power supply be?
Can you point out a case that would provide ADEQUATE COOLING? (Maybe even one that has an appropriate power supply already built in.)

This article is a cursory discussion of Intel SpeedStep Technology (SpeedStep) and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST). The goal is more to illuminate what these technologies are and are not. The detail of how each technology works is not a…

Programming of forecasting lottery numbers for self use on Turbo C++ is done by use of random number generator code by a program algorithm logic. Random numbers usually generates numbers between definite interval. Therefore, when entering the c…